Strayed Paths
by Prime Deception
Summary: Orion Pax knew Megatronus as a mentor and someone to look up to. Even Ariel found him to be charming. But when Megatronus' true motives come into light, Orion is forced to hide his identity as he becomes Prime, to protect the ones he held dear. But where does that leave Ariel? Leave a review on the way out please!


**Okay kiddies, this story is pretty much a re-vamped version of my story "Life as an Autobot" (if you are a new reader, you really don't have to read it to understand this one). I was very unprepared when I started that story, and had no clue what I was doing with it! So, this is short because it's only the prologue, so there is definitely more to come, with longer chapters as well! Alright, that's my cue to leave and let you read, and also a HUGE thanks to my buddy Exoduselita (check out her stories too, they're great!) without her, I probably wouldn't have gotten this up! She gets part of the credit for the chapter, she helped me tons with it! :D And credit for the name goes to her as well :)**

**Alright, no more babbling, without further procrastination... Strayed Paths.**

_She awoke with a start, smoky gray ash slipping off of her optic covers. She was staring at what she believed was the sky, or at least was used to be the sky, The twinkling stars and planets that she was so accustomed too, where now enveloped in a compact canopy of thick charcoal smoke, aglow with the lights of the blazes she realized where scattered everywhere._

_Hastily realizing what she was in the midst of, she sat up quickly - too quickly, apparently- and fell back down in the ash, a throbbing ache in her temple. Head rush. She raised her hand shakily to rest on her forehead, only to remove it when she felt something warm and viscous, dripping down the bridge of her nose. She lowered her hand slowly, catching sight of her fingertips, stained blue from her freshly bled energon._

_Finally working up enough strength to sit up, she tried once more, this time succeeding, and sitting up fully, resting her hand on a nearby pile of rubble._

_She racked through her memories, attempting to discover how she'd gotten here-if she could just figure out where "here" was. From her pillow of ashes, she quickly inspected her darkened surroundings; a fallen building to her left, still slowly crumbling, and to her right, the ashes of a measly vendor's cart. She sighed loudly, knowing that no one was here to judge her. She chuckled softly at the memory of her mother, scolding her whenever she would make that disgraceful sound has she had so eloquently put it._

_Her optics fell to her wrist, and she smiled sadly at the bracelet that she had never removed since the day she had received it._

**_"Come on, you big lug. You don't have to give me that!"_**

**_"But I want to!"_**

**_"And how many credits did you spend on that bracelet, let alone this dinner?" She asked, lifting her hands at their surroundings; one of Iacon's most celebrated restaurants. It must have cost a fortune just to make a _reservation_. _  
**

**_"I- well, I don't know," the mech she was sitting across from shrugged his broad shoulders, staring down at the table. He absentmindedly twirled the straw in his iced energon. "It's not important. I just wanted to give you something special." He looked over at his date, who was blushing slightly. He reached across the table to envelop his large hand in hers, smiling softly. "Please? For me?" He gazed into her azure optics, getting lost in the sheer depth of them._**

**_The pink femme sighed loudly, exaggerating it greatly, and lifting her hand to hold his in both of hers._**

**_"Alright. Just promise me that you won't go broke buying everything that you think would please me in the slightest?"_**

**_He smiled sheepishly._**

**_"I Promise." _**

_Oh Orion, if only he was still that inno- no, wait! Where was Orion?_

_Her spark surged with worry, so strong that it almost hurt. She wasn't even bonded to him, but she couldn't help herself. Her processor was screaming at her, begging her to get up and search for the mech that she had so easily fallen in love with, but her body told her otherwise. Every possible systems failure warning was in her optics. 98% of energon had been depleted since last refill. She had to find energon soon or she would quickly offline._

_"Hey, I think I see some movement over there!"_

_"Go check it out then, dumbaft!"_

_Her helm jolted up much too fast as she saw a very large mech traversing through the wreckage with a large hammer. Panic coursed quickly through her nearly emptied veins. She scrambled to the blackened cart, crouching behind it. She had no idea who the mech was, but she had a bad feeling that she really didn't want to find out. She prayed to Primus that he hadn't seen her soft pink frame._

_"Hey! You there!"_

_"Slag."_

_She slowly crawled from behind her hiding spot, knowing that there was no easy way of evading his search, especially in her condition. She peeked her head out first, only to be staring directly down the barrel of a whirring energon blaster. Her optics widened in horror as she cautiously raised her hands up in the air. She more so stunned that he was armed, than so that he was pointing it at her. "Oh, what do we have here? Hey, doc!" he yelled to his unnoticed partner, "I found a femme!"_

_She looked over the stranger's muscled body to search for his companion._

_His red colored partner looked up from where he was working, an annoyed frown on his faceplates. "This better not be another fraggin' joke, 'Break!" he mumbled more to himself. The large mech reached down and clamped her wrists in a pair of energon cuffs._

_"Hey!" she cried with shock mixed with a how-dare-you._

_"So she speaks!" He snarled with a hungry edge as he checked her out._

_"Yeah, I do, fragger. Now get away from me!"_

_"No can-do little lady! Places to go, mechs to see," he dragged her towards his partner, who was cutting through the wreckage of another building._

_His red counterpart reached him half-way. "Ah! I see you've actually managed to find something other than your missing crotch-plate, today." he teasingly smirked._

_"So you want to get down and personal, eh?" Breakdown threw the pink femme in front of him as he cracked his knuckles. "I have needs, Knockie! How was I supposed to know that the femme was only looking to hide a piece of me to embarrass me?"_

_"Well, maybe you need to control your little one instead of trying to stick it up every hole."_

_"Who says it's little?!"_

_"... You do have small peds."_

_The blue mech shook his head as he wrapped his carrying sack around his shoulder. "Yeah, well they're bigger than yours, so what does that say? Don't try to tell me what I shouldn't do-you should know by now I won't listen to you." When he had it safely on he took the femme and threw her on his shoulder. She desperatley tried to escape as she pounded her bonded wrists on his back. "Let me go you impertinent mal-function!" she screamed hysterically._

_"Come on Knockie, let's get back to base."_

_"When are you going to stop calling me that?!"_

_The blue mech chuckled, "When you stop worrying about your paint job, so... never."_

_They hauled her through the ashes of Iacon for what seemed like hours. When they reached their destination, she was almost unconscious, her body unable to take anymore. Her kidnapper threw her to the ground, where she collapsed, her face coming in full contact with the ground with a 'clank'._

_"Hey, Boss! We got a live one! A femme this time!"_

_A brawny figure appeared from the side to take a look at their finding._

_"Knockout, Breakdown. Finally, you found a good reason to return, since last time when you both scandalously ruined things. But tell me;" he raised an optic ridge, looking from the femme to his soldiers, "Is this femme you bring to me even alive?" He knelt down towards her, lifting her chin from the black ash. He gently tapped her shoulder to wake her from her pain induced slumber. He grabbed a cloth from subspace and started wiping her face clean, the ash making her faceplates almost unrecognizable._

_He inhaled sharply," ... Ariel?"_

_The pink femme feebly opened her optics._

_"Megatronus?"_

**"**Come on, Ariel! Wake up!"_  
_

Said femme stirred in her slumber, subconsciously scooting her knees up to her chestplates, curling into a ball to try and offer herself more protection. Vivid flashbacks were plaguing her recharge, inhibiting her, _and _her partner from getting any wink of recharge. She suddenly thrashed in her berth, her wrist hitting the very large, hard body next to her with a loud 'thwack'.

The mech beside her groaned inwardly, rubbing his now-sore shoulder. He dropped his helm back onto their shared berth, any attempts at waking her up had officially been thwarted. He was worried about her. This was the third night in a row that she had had this gripping nightmare slash flashback, presumably the same one as the two nights before. It was also the third night in a row that he had barely gotten enough recharge, spark plagued by worry for his femme. He sighed, once again deciding to try and relieve her from her pain and wake her from recharge.

He sat up carefully, twisting his waist so that he was leaning over the femme, and gently ran the back of his servo over her quivering cheek, "Sweetspark, wake up," she moaned quietly in response, unfolding her legs and instead curling up to him. Her optics opened gingerly, squinting as the brightness of the mechs optics fell upon hers.

"W-what?" she said groggily, pulling his frame down towards her to cuddle into his chest-plates. He lazily wrapped an arm around her shoulders, kissing the top of her helm sweetly.

"You were having that dream again, darling."

She raised her helm to gaze into her mechs optics, smiling sadly. "Don't worry about me, I'll be alright."

"Are you sure?"

She nodded solemnly, reaching up to bring his mouthplates into a tender kiss, "I'm sure, Megatron."

**BOOM! and I leave you with that. If you could be so kind as to leave me a review on the way out, it would be much appreciated :) **


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